RIO DE JANEIRO -- There were first-tee jitters, for sure. This was something new, something distinctive, and even at 7:30 a.m. local time, Graham DeLaet felt a unique vibe as he plunged his tee into the ground on the first tee of the Olympic Golf Course.
Golf returned to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1904, and DeLaet was in the opening group on purpose. Canadian George Lyon won the individual Olympic gold in St. Louis 112 years ago, the last time golf made an appearance in the games, and it wasn't lost on the organizers that DaLaet is from that part of the world.
"I was a little bit nervous actually,'' said DeLaet, 34, who opened the Olympic tournament with a 5-under-par 66 and is tied for second with Henrik Stenson but trails Australian leader Marcus Fraser by 3 strokes. "We do this for a living week in and week out, but there was something different about that first tee shot today. It was a different announcement for us, and it was just a really cool feeling.
"I was playing with a Brazilian (Adilson da Silva), and that was neat. We had a lot of people out, especially for 7:30 in the morning, more than I anticipated. It was a lot of fun. We said as we were walking off the first tee, this is pretty cool, first time in over a hundred years, and we're kind of the lead group. It was nice.''
If DeLaet was experiencing any trepidation, he didn't show it -- although later he did hint at it. And it has far more to do with what he's been battling around the greens than any nervousness associated with playing in the Olympics.
On the eve of the Memorial Tournament in June, DeLaet took the unusual step of going to Twitter to announce he was withdrawing.
"I'm dealing with incredible anxiety while chipping/pitching right now,'' he wrote. "It's not fun. I needed to WD to get it sorted and get back ASAP.''
Yikes. Any golfer knows the fear associated with the dreaded yips, whether it be putting, chipping or with the full swing. We saw it painfully play out with Ernie Els on the first green at the Masters. None other than the great Ben Hogan dealt with putting problems. Same with Bernhard Langer. Earlier last year, it was believed that Tiger Woods was battling those demons as he inexplicably couldn't hit a chip shot.
Whether that was actually the diagnosis for DeLaet is unclear, but he undoubtedly had issues chipping the ball from around the green. After withdrawing from the Memorial, he has played just three tournaments, two of them opposite-field events and the last the Canadian Open three weeks ago, where he had more chipping problems and missed the cut.
"A little bit of a break for my brain and just try to regroup,'' DeLaet said of his self-imposed break. "Everything is feeling better and better all the time. I know that when I finally get through the whole thing, it's just going to be a little blip on my radar when I look back on my career and that's how I look going forward.''
Understandably DeLaet doesn't go into a lot of specifics. It is a difficult subject, and one that he has yet to conquer. For those who have endured such troubles, the thought always looms that a poor chip shot -- an embarrassing one even -- could occur the next time a ball does not find a green.
For this day at least, DeLaet performed quite well. His name is near the top of the leaderboard after one round of the Olympic tournament. And a little perspective never hurts.
"When you see how much (the Olympics) means to the other athletes, they have been working at this for four straight years and they are trying to peak for this time, and coming out in the opening ceremonies, you can see how much it means to them, and the pride and the excitement that they have,'' DeLaet said; "That's been probably the neatest thing for me to see is just how much this means to those other people.''